Progressive Communications is excited to announce Sarah Baldree, daughter of Network Operations Center Engineer Robert Baldree, was recently named Bibb County’s STAR Student for 2017!

The prestigious STAR award carries stringent requirements for eligibility: Students must have the highest SAT scores of their graduating class as well as a GPA in the either the top 10 percent or the top 10 students. Sarah carries a perfect 4.0 GPA and scored an incredible 1550 on the SAT out of 1600. For reference, the national average SAT score for college-bound students is 1083.

“Sarah is a great test taker and an extremely well-rounded student,” said her father Robert, whose other two daughters, Colleen and Rhianna, won the STAR Student award in Peach County when they were seniors. Now, Colleen is a dental student at Augusta University and Rhianna works for the University of Illinois on a project where she digitizes their microfungi collection.

“Sarah loves to learn,” Robert said. “She picks up everything she hears. [Her sisters] offered her more stimulus. She taught herself to read because she knew there were words on the page and she couldn’t stand not being able access them.”

Sarah has been accepted to UGA, Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, which is ranked as the number one Liberal Arts College in the country by U.S. News, and Johns Hopkins University. She has also interviewed with Ivy League schools such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, and has garnered interest from Stanford University and Emory. Whichever of these fine institutions she chooses, she has high aspirations and plans to attend medical school after college.

In addition to her academic excellence, Sarah is one of the captains of the soccer team at Central High School and is a member of several clubs. “Her mother and I both are just so very proud of her and all her accomplishments. We fully support her in whatever she wants to do. She has no limits – the hardest part is just choosing from all of these great options.”

Progressive is committed to supporting education and the improvement of local schools. We are so happy to be able to share this news about the success of our employee’s daughter. For years, Progressive has partnered with the Bibb County Board of Education by helping maintain their large network for all of their schools.